GOOD TO THE LAST DROP EVANDER HOLYFIELD AND RIDDICK BOWE WENT TOE-TO-TOE AND POUNDED OUT A THRILLING END TO THEIR EPIC TRILOGY

Of all the great collaborations--Martin and Lewis, Hope andCrosby, Penn and Teller--none have been so reliably satisfying asBowe and Holyfield. Through three major productions, the twohave created a level of excitement that continues to elude theircontemporaries in boxing. Each time out, despite the familiaritygained in previous rounds against each other, they fashion afresh drama. It's amazing that their partnership never grewstale, though we must presume it finally concluded last Saturdayin the chilled desert air of Las Vegas.

Their third meeting was, in its way, every bit as spectacularand unpredictable as their first two. In the first fight, heldin 1992 when both were undefeated, Riddick Bowe, then 25, heldsway in the fight of the year. That one was marked by one ofboxing's best rounds, when Bowe nearly submerged the droolingand vacant Evander Holyfield early in the 10th and then had tofight for survival in the space of just three minutes. Thesecond bout, held in 1993, is remembered almost as much for theFan Man, the paraglider who interrupted the fight, as it is forHolyfield's valiance in regaining the upper hand and his WBA andIBF heavyweight titles.

And then there was last Saturday's rubber match at CaesarsPalace, in which Bowe was knocked down for the first time in hisprofessional life--he was a standing dead man in the neutralcorner--and in which Holyfield was knocked out for the first timein his. The detonations, spaced only two rounds apart in the ebband flow that these fighters have made their signature, wereastonishing, breathtaking. The drama was everything that wasright about boxing, coming after a week that was, until fighttime, more famous for X-rays of Mike Tyson's broken thumb thananything else.

Of course, the conclusiveness of this ending, with an exhaustedHolyfield getting hammered hopelessly into the ropes early inthe eighth round, effectively rules out any further meetings. Nomatter. This tandem need not endure--as, say, the Captain andTennille--to make history. In only 94 minutes of boxing, Bowe andHolyfield have been delivered straight into Ali-Frazier country,their careers forever defined by their repeated and concussivecollisions.

Ever since Holyfield came back to unseat a fat and unmotivatedBowe in their return match, a third bout was preordained. Butthe matchup took two years to put together. During that periodHolyfield lost his titles immediately to Michael Moorer in astunning upset on April 22, 1994, and retired three days later,after a heart condition had been diagnosed. Ultimately thediagnosis was reversed, and Holyfield began a comeback thisyear. Bowe, whose ascent through the ranks was viewed as eitherarrogant or independent, suffered terribly when he lost histitles to Holyfield in their second fight. His political cloutwithin the sport was suddenly gone, and he was frozen out of theworld rankings. As promoter Don King regained control of theheavyweight titles and began to safeguard them for Tyson'srelease from prison, neither Bowe nor Holyfield could make abig-money bout--except with each other.

The quality of their first two matches was substantial enoughthat promoters could easily fund fighters' purses of $8 millioneach, minimum. Bowe-Holyfield was a reliable producer ofrevenues. The two previous fights are among the top-grossingpay-per-view fights in history. Like movie properties, boxingsequels can go only so far. But a third Bowe-Holyfield fight,even if Bowe was heavily favored, was not exactly milking it.

Bowe, 28, having nearly regained his Holyfield I glory, wasregarded as the finest heavyweight in the ring today even beforeHolyfield III. Younger by five years, bigger by 27 pounds andtaller by 2 1/2 inches than Holyfield, Bowe predicted that hewould smash his 33-year-old opponent this time around. He wouldeither knock him out, he said, or "make him quit."

Holyfield, meanwhile, was similarly confident. For his part, hewas going to knock Bowe out. Holyfield had never before made aprediction like that. For him, it was an absurdity. "Whistlingin the graveyard," Bowe suggested.

That was about as much bravado as they could come up with. After24 rounds that were as close to life and death as fighters get,they have come to an easy and mutual admiration of each other.Holyfield admires Bowe's skills; Bowe, Holyfield's heart. "Ithink I'm starting to like you," Bowe told Holyfield at onepoint. There are a few things they continue to disagree about.Bowe still thinks Holyfield looks like a "gargoyle." AndHolyfield still thinks Bowe is a dirty fighter. In aface-to-face appearance on ESPN, during which they watched andanalyzed their previous fights, Holyfield accused Bowe of manylow blows and an annoying need to get the last punch in. Boweapologized and covered his smirk with his huge hand. Holyfieldglowered. Watching them, you couldn't help thinking how domesticthey had become.

Once they reentered the ring, their odd marital relationship wasout the window. So were the fight plans they had previewed foreverybody. What was supposed to be boxing--each believed he'd hadhis finest moments against the other when he jabbed instead ofslugged--degenerated quickly into in-fighting, as the combatantsstood forehead to forehead and ripped uppercuts and rib shotsinto each other. Holyfield had decided not to fight outside "andget pecked to death by Bowe's jab," but to struggle inside. Asthey muscled each other around the ring, though, Holyfield beganto sense a mismatch. The best-conditioned athlete in this landbegan to see that he was finally up against it. "In my mind,things were going pretty bad for me," Holyfield said later, eventhough he was leading on the scorecards through seven rounds.

Emanuel Steward, who trained Holyfield for his upset of Bowe,saw it early on. "Evander was bone-tired from the second round,"he said. "You know, [in his camp] they do all these exercises,StairMasters, have these contests climbing ladders, but it's notthe same as muscling a guy around, bone on bone, that you get insparring. And I know for a fact, Evander doesn't like to spar.He doesn't like to box. He was conditioned for exercises, notboxing."

Holyfield appeared flat-footed to begin the fifth round, unableto raise his arms or get out of anyone's way. He looked empty.When Bowe lifted him off the ground with a very low blow,Holyfield was in bad enough shape that he thought about quittingon the spot. "An easy way to go out of there," he would saylater. Of course, he couldn't quit. Would never. What he did, inthe sixth round, was launch a lunging left hook to Bowe's head,a desperate punch that left Bowe on the canvas and utterlysenseless. Bowe got up, staggered backward and retreated to aneutral corner, "where I knew the ropes at least could supportme." Bowe, in a great postfight speech about collecting himself,would pooh-pooh the danger he was in. The fact is, one sharppunch would have left him incapacitated for a long time. ButHolyfield, who had Bowe defenseless, could not finish him off."He taps Bowe on the shoulder," says Steward, "he knocks himout. He couldn't even do that." As it turns out, Holyfield wasso physically spent that he did not have even one more punch inhim that round.

Bowe used the seventh round to gather himself, and then, as thetwo traded punches in the eighth, he cracked Holyfield with aright hand that downed him. Holyfield got up at the count ofnine, but Bowe quickly and easily sent him right back down withtwo chopping rights to the head. The fight was over, 58 secondsinto the round. Their partnership was finally concluded.

Sadly, the lesson of Bowe and Holyfield is lost upon Tyson,potentially the most charismatic fighter of this generation,whose career continues to be arrested in a mythology that onlyhis handlers seem to still enjoy. He was supposed to make hissecond comeback fight last Saturday night, hoping his bout witha light-hitting Buster Mathis Jr. would restore his reputationas the baddest man in America, in a way that his 89-second fightwith pizza pitchman Peter McNeeley had not.

The dueling promotions--Tyson's fight at the MGM Grand was toheadline Fox TV's sweeps-month effort on free television, whileTVKO was to show Bowe-Holyfield on pay-per-view half an hourlater--were a source of much conspiracy theory among the boxingcommunity, a family that is inflamed by paranoia to begin with.It was Tyson promoter King against Bowe promoter Rock Newman,Caesars Palace vs. the MGM Grand, Fox against TVKO (the boxingpay-per-view-arm of HBO). The supposed provocations werevarious, but most observers believed that Tyson, with King'sbacking, simply wanted to put it to HBO in a continuation of afeud that, like the Hatfields and McCoys, no longer knows itsown origins. For whatever reasons, the two promotions ploddedstubbornly toward a showdown that both would lose. Gamingrevenues in the casinos would be fragmented, even diminished, asmany fight fans would simply stay home to watch Tyson on free TVand then buy the Bowe-Holyfield broadcast rather than descend onLas Vegas. Ticket sales were down, though the MGM's live gateseemed to be suffering the most. While Fox would surely scorebig ratings with a Tyson fight, TVKO would probably take it onthe chin, losing some viewers who might think one fight isenough and a second at $39.95 is way too much.

The rumored sabotages were semicomic. HBO sports president SethAbraham says that it's a sad part of his job to get inside themind of Don King. So it was that TVKO, not wanting to beginBowe-Holyfield until the conclusion of a Tyson fight, boughtsatellite time into the wee hours of Sunday morning just in caseKing decided to start the Tyson telecast late. There was even aworst-case scenario in executive producer Ross Greenburg's TVKOproduction book in which WBC champion Frank Bruno, at King'sbehest, would jump into the ring following Tyson-Mathis and gopsycho, causing Fox to extend its boxing telecast, thus delayingBowe-Holyfield.

What happened was nearly as strange: Tyson bailed out of his $10million payday last Tuesday, claiming he'd reinjured histhumb--which he said he broke three weeks earlier--in a sparringsession. Examinations by well-regarded Las Vegas doctorsconfirmed the injury to nearly everyone's satisfaction; injuriesdo happen, and indeed they had happened four times before inTyson's career. Still, the skepticism the pullout engendered didnot contribute to the health of a troubled sport. The timing ofthe withdrawal, if Tyson's injury really had been sustainedthree weeks earlier, encouraged dark thoughts (many reportersviewed the public workout the day before the pull-outannouncement as a setup, with Tyson first mentioning his sorehand there). But even if everything was exactly as Tyson's campsaid it was, the affair still points to a comeback that seemswithout direction, plan or much motivation (and for the moment,without King, who has been in New York City for the past monthon trial for wire fraud). Somehow Tyson's dismissing thecancellation as not even an inconvenience to his personalfinances ("It's not like I'm hurting for money," was hisextremely odd reaction) does not make his comeback any morecredible.

What Tyson cannot yet do, and wouldn't have done even in ablowout of Mathis, is deliver on his mystique, one thatseemingly gained strength during his prison term for rape. Hisaura of danger is now rapidly dissipating. What he hasn't done,or won't do, as he culls easy marks for his comeback, is producea memorable fight. Sadly, he learns nothing from Bowe andHolyfield, who have made three.

After Saturday's fight Lennox Lewis, the man whose giftscertainly rival those of Bowe's, was at the press conferencedemanding a fight. Presumably that will happen, perhaps as earlyas March or April. There were reports that up the Strip, Tysonwas going to go after Bruno for his WBC title, also next spring.Presumably Mathis will be bypassed. However, neither Bowe-Lewisnor Tyson-Bruno seems as interesting nor as promising as anysingle Bowe-Holyfield fight. But Bowe-Holyfield, let's face it,is history.

COLOR PHOTO: V.J. LOVERO Although Big Daddy rained blows on Holyfield's head all night, he held off the thunder until Round 8. [Riddick Bowe fighting Evander Holyfield]COLOR PHOTO: JOHN IACONO Holyfield's desperate punch laid Bowe low, but that knockdown was only a prelude to his own demise. [Evander Holyfield knocking down Riddick Bowe]COLOR PHOTO: ROBERT BECK [See caption above--Evander Holyfield lying on canvas as Riddick Bowe walks away]COLOR PHOTO: HOLLY STEIN/ALLSPORT Holyfield was down and out, and Bowe was up in the air celebrating his triumph in the rubber match. [Riddick Bowe celebrating victory over Evander Holyfield]COLOR PHOTO: LENNOX MCLENDON/AP Holyfield's valiant effort was applauded by Bowe, but Tyson drew fire after breaking his thumb. [Mike Tyson with broken thumb]COLOR PHOTO: V.J. LOVERO [See caption above--reporter interviewing Riddick Bowe]

Before he became the premier postseason performer of his generation, the Patriots icon was a middling college quarterback who invited skepticism, even scorn, from fans and his coaches. That was all—and that was everything